Q&A with Amtrak President Alex Kummant

BOSTON (Reuters.com) - As oil prices surge, many Americans are rediscovering the railroad. Amtrak, America's struggling passenger railroad, saw record numbers in May when ridership rose 12.3 percent from a year earlier, and ticket sales climbed 15.6 percent, according to company data. Reuters Boston Bureau Chief Jason Szep spoke with Amtrak President Alex Kummant. What follows are excerpts from that interview.

Q: What has been the effect of gas prices on Amtrak's ridership?

A: "We are clearly growing at an increasing rate. Two years ago we grew a little more than 1 percent ridership. Last year 6.3 percent and this year we believe certainly ridership will grow north of 10 percent and we might hit 11 percent year over year growth. It depends on the service but certainly our ridership growth is linked to the fuel prices. And we would say roughly that system-wide about half of our growth is because of overall gasoline prices. It varies a little bit by service. We also believe we have been better at retaining customers over the last few years than we did perhaps five years ago. We have worked very hard on the product. Our on-time performance on the Northeast Corridor is very strong. The last two years we have flirted with 90 percent on-time performance with the Acela but we are certainly north of 85 percent on time, which is significantly better than the airlines and on a tighter window.

And in market share - if you take air-rail share on the Northeast Corridor combined - we are up to 63 percent share between (Washington) D.C. and New York and 49 percent share between New York and Boston."

Q: What is the barrier to expanding the high-speed Acela service?

A: "We are up against capacity limits. On the Acela product overall, again in round numbers, we move 3 million plus on Acela and 7 million plus on what we call the regional product. But we are in near sold-out conditions in the peak hours, certainly out of New York and out of D.C. We would say we have less than 10 percent capacity left on Acela . On the regional product there's probably something a little south of 20 percent, maybe 15 to 17 percent yet. "

Q: Do you need more investment to bring on rolling stock (added cars)?

A: "Fundamentally it comes to rolling stock. And even with the Acela product, it is time to start looking at a replacement for that product. If we started today, particularly with a high-speed product, and we said we need to replace that. It would be six to eight years until one got a serious flow of new equipment in, so there is work to be done there. And frankly at the end of the day we don't know where that capital would come from other than really a stand alone appropriation.

At some point, someone has to look at the Northeast Corridor operation and say if we really want new equipment there we - and we're talking in the end multiple billions of dollars just for the equipment - we have to start looking at that now and we have to start getting serious about funding that as well."